Francis Poulenc

Francis Poulenc learned the piano from Ricardo Viñes rather than in a conservatoire. He was counted among Les Six in the Paris of the 1920s. Les Biches, the Concert champêtre written for Wanda Landowska and the Concerto for Two Pianos are among his instrumental works. From the mid-1930s he wrote sacred works including the Litanies à la Vierge noire, the Mass in G, the Stabat Mater, the Gloria. He set poems by Apollinaire and Éluard, and for more than two decades he toured as accompanist to the baritone Pierre Bernac, for whom he wrote numerous songs. His three operas are the surrealist farce Les Mamelles de Tirésias, the telephone monologue La Voix humaine for a single singer, and Dialogues des Carmélites. His first lessons came from his mother, and in Paris he studied with Charles Koechlin; Honegger, Auric and Milhaud were among his companions in Les Six, and his catalogue runs to some hundred and fifty works. La voix humaine, on a libretto by Cocteau, who designed the production as well, was first staged at the Opera-Comique on 6 February 1959 with Denise Duval and Georges Pretre conducting. In 1962 he wrote an Oboe Sonata dedicated to Prokofiev and a Clarinet Sonata dedicated to Honegger, and he died at home in Paris on 30 January 1963.